A method, apparatus, and article of manufacture provide a component-based computing system having both publicly accessible and privately-only accessible computing components within multiple applications for providing component addressing/identification and naming spaces. A requested processing component is initiated by a calling component within a local computing system having one or more applications. The identity of the requested processing component, including an identity of a class ID and an identity of a partition from a request to activate a component initiated by a calling component, is obtained using configuration data for the requested component. The configuration data provides an indication of public-private status for the requested component. An instance of the requested component can be activated based on the public-private status.